1881.] on the Land Systems of Englaiid and of Ireland. 563 



AvluTc a family property is ruined by one or two spendthrift limited 

 owners in succession. Experience amply sliows that, in such cases, 

 it generally changes hands for the better, notwithstanding the loss of 

 ancestral connection. The new purchaser may be comparatively 

 ignorant of country life, but he is not encumbered by rent-charges of 

 indefinite duration, by mortgages contracted to pay off his father's 

 debts, by dynastic traditions of estate-management, by the silly 

 family pride which must needs emulate tlie state of some richer 

 predecessor, by the j^assion for political dictation to which the refusal 

 of leases is so frequently due, or by the supposed necessity of satis- 

 fying the supposed expectations of the neighbourhood. He can 

 provide for his widow and younger children by selling off portions of 

 the property, if he ])leases, instead of charging the estate, and in the 

 meantime he can develope the resources of the property, without 

 fcMiling that he is either compromising or unjustly enriching an 

 eldest son. These advantages make themselves felt even when the 

 new jiurchaser is surrounded with great settled estates and influenced 

 by the example of their possessors. But they might be expected to 

 make themselves far more conspicuously felt if all landowners 

 enjoyed the same freedom of disposition. 



3. The inevitable tendency of a land system thus founded on 

 Primogeniture, and guarded by family settlements, is to prevent the 

 dispersion of land, and to promote its concentration in a few hands. 

 Settled estates seldom come into the market, and, when they do, the 

 money has generally to be reinvested in land ; but there is nothing 

 to prevent a rich life-tenant from increasing the size of his property, 

 and this is constantly happening. A very large number of farm- 

 houses in England are really ancient manor houses, formerly the 

 residence of squires and yeomen, w4iose little freeholds have been 

 gmdually absorbed into the princely territories of the landed aris- 

 tocracy, and whose descendants are settled in the neighbouring towns. 

 Of course, we must not forget the opposite movement, or counter- 

 migration of retired tradespeople into the country ; but they seldom 

 take root there ; they do not look upon their villas as homes, they 

 count for nothing in a county, and their children are usually re- 

 absorbed into the town population. 



Upon the whole, it may be stated with certainty tliat the number 

 of agricultural landowners in England was never so small, as tho 

 population was never so large, as it now is. It would appear from 

 Domesday Book that in the reign of William tlie Conqueror the soil 

 of England was divided among about 170,000 landowners, including 

 more than 100,U00 villeins, as well as above 50,000 freeholders. 

 There is no direct mode of estimating the number of landowners 

 between that age and our own, but there is a vast body of indirect 

 evidence pointing to the conclusion that in the reign of Elizabeth, for 

 instance, petty squires, yeomen, and small freeholders occu2)ied a 

 much larger space in the community than they do at present. Even 

 since the compilation of the ' New Domesday Book,' in 1876, there is 



